104 



PASSENGER PIGEON 



rous places could be pointed out where for several years after 

 scarce a single vegetable made its appearance. 



When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from 

 considerable distances visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, 

 long poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruc- 

 tion. In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses 

 with them. By the Indians a Pigeon roost, or breeding place, is 

 considered an important source of national profit and dependance 

 for that season ; and all their active ingenuity is exercised on the 

 occasion. The breeding place differs from the former in its greater 

 extent. In the western countries above mentioned, these are ge- 

 nerally in beech woods, and often extend in nearly a straight line 

 across the country for a great way. Not far from Shelbyville in 

 the state of Kentucky, about five years ago, there was one of these 

 breeding places, which stretched through the woods in nearly a 

 north and south direction; was several miles in breadth, and was 

 said to be upwards of forty miles in extent! In this tract almost 

 every tree was furnished with nests, wherever the branches could 

 accommodate them. The Pigeons made their first appearance 

 there about the tenth of April, and left it altogether, with their 

 young, before the twenty-fifth of May. 



As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they left 

 the nests, numerous parties of the inhabitants, from all parts of the 

 adjacent country, came with waggons, axes, beds, cooking utensils, 

 many of them accompanied by the greater part of their families, 

 and encamped for several days at this immense nursery. Several 

 of them informed me, that the noise in the woods was so great as 

 to terrify their horses, and that it was difficult for one person to 

 hear another speak without bawling in his ear. The ground was 

 strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab Pigeons, 

 which had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of 

 hogs were fattening. Hawks, Buzzards and Eagles were sailing 

 about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their nests at 



